We can hear mindfulness nowadays a lot, but it still seems a little bit mysterious thing. What is mindfulness really about? How can you implement it into your daily life? Let’s see first Wikipedia’s description of it:

“Mindfulness is the psychological process of bringing one’s attention to experiences occurring in the present moment, which one can develop through the practice of meditation and through other training.”

Mindfulness as a practice is described as:

“Mindfulness is a way of paying attention that originated in Eastern meditation practices”

“Paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally”

“Bringing one’s complete attention to the present experience on a moment-to-moment basis”

I participated at a mindfulness course organized by tudatossag.net last autumn. I practised actively for 8 weeks what mindfulness is about with the help of the trainer András Barta.

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Even though the course was really useful for me, it is absolutely not obligatory to start your journey on mindfulness with an 8-week-long course just like I did. You can take baby steps. I collected 3 tips which you can try even today to be more mindful.

1 Focus on One Thing at the Time – to the Thing You Are Actually Doing

The main message of my time management trainings is to avoid multitasking, because it does not make us more effective. I consider it as my personal mission help more and more people to stop multitasking and luckily I am not alone to do it. One of the main principles of mindfulness is to be present at the moment, in what we are doing, live it. It happens to us quite often that we are acting automatically for example when we are washing our teeth or going to our work place. However this way we loose some part of the experience and sometimes it can be dangerous as well. As a first step, I suggest to you to put away your phone when you meet someone next time. This way you will be able to give your full attention to the other person. Or when you go running, don’t think on your shopping list while running. Even a simple lunch can be a real experience if you pay attention to the taste of the food instead of watching Facebook videos meanwhile. Try it, it’s worth it.

2 Observe Without Judging

Whatever happens in your body or to you, instead of being nervous about why that is going on, or punishing yourself for something, try to observe the process as much as you can. We can’t change the past and the future has so much possibilities, that is why it is worth to observe the present without judging. I am not saying to be a passive participant of your life. However, there are plenty of things we can not change. You can observe these things without any judgement, pay attention to these just like a child with curiosity. This is how can learn to accept what is happening. It may seem a big challenge in the beginning, but this is definitely a skill which can be developed with practise.

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3 Meditation

There are a lot of meditation techniques, the point of mindfulness meditation is to pay attention, observe, be present at the moment just like I mentioned above. It could be useful just observe our breathing during a mindfulness meditation, and do not want to change it. Starting from our breathing through our bodies, feelings, thoughts, we can observe anything. This helps us to be more mindful.

As you can see, mindfulness is not only about formal meditation.

If you are really interested in mindfulness, I suggest you to dig into it and read more about the topic. Feel free to contact me, I’d be happy to tell you more about my experiences. If you have the opportunity, participate at a course as well. The 3 tips I described will help you to start your journey, but these are only the first steps.